To The Eagle:

“A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed.”

The 2nd Amendment clearly specifies national defense to be the core reason a citizen would be expected to keep a weapon at home. When those 27 words were written in the 18th century, the single shot musket or pistol was the most advanced weapon available.

That era’s military doctrine of ‘massed fire’ demanded shoulder to shoulder ranks of soldiers firing their muskets in a simultaneous fusillade. After hundreds of years of firearms innovation, one person wielding a modern combat rifle can in moments reduce any such rank of soldiers to bloody pulp.

To fulfill the intent of the 2nd Amendment, it would not be an ‘infringement’ to have a citizen’s purchase of a firearm activate automatic enlistment in a federal military reserve or their state’s National Guard auxiliary, requiring weapons training under military discipline.

Twenty first century jurists have conflated our right to “keep and bear arms” into a preposterous liberty allowing almost anyone to possess any number of sophisticated weapons and munitions. Children massacred in their schools by such weapons are not only the victims of deranged murderers, but also of the pernicious lie that having guns makes us safer.

‘Pro-life’ zealots devoted to saving unborn children should direct their moral fervor toward protecting living children, by picketing and condemning firearms manufacturers and sellers and petitioning their legislators to restrict the types and quantity of weapons available to citizens.

The CDC’s latest statistics confirm that today’s leading cause of death and injury among children is guns. Americans’ unmitigated access to firearms is freedom run amok, and a fatal liberty taking a disastrous toll of our children’s lives.

JB Bouchard

Puget Island